Protect your Right to Fair Elections!

Representative Rush Holt and over 40 cosponsors have introduced a bill that would require a voter-verifiable audit trail on every voting system. It's called the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 (H.R. 2239). If we can get this bill passed, we won't have to fight, state by state and county by county, to preserve democratic elections.

The text of the bill, and many other details, are listed here.

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Background on Understanding The Problem

“Imagine, it’s Election Day 2004. You enter your polling place and go to cast your vote on a brand new ‘touch screen’ voting machine. The screen says your vote has been counted. As you exit the voting booth, however, you begin to wonder. How do I know if the machine actually recorded my vote? This fact is, you don’t.” ~
~ Representative Rush Holt (NJ).

The problem is simple: A touch screen voting machine records your vote in the memory of the machine, where you can't see it. How do you know your vote for candidate A wasn't recorded as a vote for candidate B? You don't!

Many states and communities are planning to buy massive numbers of so-called "Direct Recording Electronic" (DRE) machines (paperless touch screen are DREs, but there are other kinds of DREs that use dials or switches instead of touch screens). Some are already using them.

Unfortunately, these machines are dangerous for democracy. With the computer technology they are using, there is always a risk that a program flaw or, worse, tampering with the software could change votes and even change the outcome of elections. And these changes might not be detected! Since ballots are secret, once the voter leaves the booth there is no one who can detect or correct any errors that the machine made in recording the votes. If the election results are obviously absurd, as happens occasionally with other kinds of vote-counting equipment, the only options will be to accept an obviously wrong election result or hold a new election.

The solution is simple: require there to be a "voter verifiable audit trail" with all voting equipment. A voter verifiable audit trail is a permanent record of each vote that the voter can check to ensure that it represents their intent. These votes are deposited in a secure ballot box. If there is a manual recount, we can be sure that the votes being counted are what the voters wanted to cast.

Without this requirement, we can never again have confidence that our elections reflect the will of the voters, as opposed to a random error or the will of someone who tampered with the voting machines.

For more info and to take ACTION: VerifiedVoting.org